Well yes, another week has gone by in my frustrating life. On the upside, I got on the scale this morning and realized I've lost 25 pounds this summer. I'm down to 235. Who needs Atkins Diets when you have massive amounts of STRESS? Now 35 pounds more to go and I'll be very happy. Of couse the stress may kill me before then. But then, I won't have anything to worry about will I? It's like this little thing my ex mom-in-law used to have pinned to her fridge:

Either you are well or you are sick.If you are well, there's nothing to worry about.If you are sick, there are only two things to worry about.Either you will get well, or you will die.If you get well, there's nothing to worry about.But if you die, there are only two things to worry about.Either you will go to heaven or hell.If you go to heaven, there's nothing to worry about.But if you go to hell, you'll be so busy shaking hands with friends,You won't have time to worry.

Robbie the postman finally decided to go ahead with the divorce from not-Sue. I say finally because we have all been telling him for at least ten years to stop complaining, get off his ass and divorce her. So he finally hired a lawyer and she hired one and now it's a game of seeing how much of each other's shit they can manage to hide before the lawyers start getting in and taking inventory to see how much everything is worth. I think he's doing the old "sell you car to a friend for a buck" scam to get rid of a bunch of stuff. But his guns are a different story. Some of them might be less than legal and you can't really sell your friends that kind of thing without getting them in trouble too. So the next best thing, especially if your mate does not know you have them is to take them somewhere else and let someone babysit them for awhile. So I get to babysit these babies.

The nice part is I get to shoot them whenever I want to as well which really helps when you are frustrated. Assasinating a 21" computer monitor with a Ruger Mini 14 is a very good thing.

Well, Deb was back in the hosptial again yesterday. Same old same old, black outs and chest pains. After her exended stay from the 15th through the 18th they ruled out Mitral Valve prolapse. The echo showed a normal heart which we were all relieved about. BUT she is still having the symptoms that make it look like a heart attack each time it happens so we keep going back to the emergency room. She has a new doctor whom we really like and he seems to be making progress in helping her. He has diagnosed Orthstatic Hypotension. For those of you without a PDR, that is the extreme opposite of High Blood Pressure. As I understand it, whenever we are at rest, standing or sitting or lying down, blood just naturally pools in our lower extremities. And when you either move or get up, you experience a sudden drop in blood pressure which sometimes gives us a head rush or momentary vertigo. Well then the autonomic nervous system kicks in and tells the heart to pump a little faster to compensate for the loss in BP and everything goes back to normal. In people with Orthostatic hypotension, that does not happen and they pass out for a few seconds to a minute.

So the Doc put her on Fludrocortisone which is a cortico steroid that helps regualte the blood pressure and keep it a little higher. We bought an automatic BP cuff so she can monitor what happens at rest and then in motion and she has been diligetn about that. For the first week, it seemed the drug was working pretty well. Her episodes of chest pain decreased dramatically and got less severe and where she was passing out 4 times a night before, she went to passing out once in four days. So we thought maybe we were on to something. So this week the doc increased the dosage and that's where things went to shit. she started passing out more and the chest pains returned and she's not been able to sleep at night without screaming, kicking nightmares. and yesterday we were back in the ER. So now I think it's a matter of either finding anotehr med or decreasing the dosage to half way in between the first try and the second try and seeing where we go from there.

next week she gets fitted for an event monitor which she has to wear for 30 days which mght give us some more insight into what is happeneing when she has her periods of syncope. it amazes me for all they do know about the human body, there is still so much they don't know.

In happier news, my Vampire alter ego, Wander, in the Vampires game got married Wednesday night to redsgoddes. It was a really nice ceremony and a lot of fun roleplaying it. I gave her a wing of my castle as a wedding gift and she gave me five human virgins to do with as I please. We decided to share them.

Because of stressful events of this summer, I once again will not be setting up for and selling my jewelry at the Argyle Antique Gas Engine Association annual get-together this weekend. It will actually be fun to go out and not have any responsibilities, just walk around and eat good food and talk to old friends. Gotta have a raspberry pippin with ice cream, some homemade rootbeer, a funnel cake, onion rings, roasted corn on the cob and a lemon shake-up and I will be in heaven. And if I put back on a few pounds, oh well.

Other than that, last weekend I juiced 2 1/2 gallons of blue plum juice, a gallon of concord grape juice and picked 2 bushels of bartlet pear from my trees so this weekend we will be canning and jelly making. I already canned 13 pints of ginger pears. I'm also going to do mint pears and cinnamon pears. Yummy. Hope everyone has a great weekend.

You still can. If you would have stayed in the game, I was going to suggest it. I've become a big wig in the game it seems. Not quite sure how it happenend but we could make sure you had hot and cold running virgins all the time.

tell robbie the mailman that the sick bastard is behind him in the decision.

be well. have fun. I will be moving monday, so my internet use will be sporadic at best-- but I'm going to be paying significantly less rent, so I can almost guarantee being able to make it out for the party in july. ROCK!